User blog:TrollofReason/What a Troll thinks you should know...
This is the Dead Space Wikia-run wiki. As a wiki anyone can contribute to it, and that is a good thing. Dead Space is a science fiction series set in a far-flung future, and that is an awesome thing. Most people don't know enough elementary science to know what they are talking about when they use terms like "energy," or "organic," and that is a bad thing. Bad science fiction writing (or fanon, whatever) is preventable with a few bits of information. To make this blog post readable, I'll be breaking it into sections so you don't have to look at solid walls of text. Paragraphs will be as brief as possible, running along a simple sentence=thought, paragraph=complete idea format. I am not a specialist in science and have had no formal training, so I'm not versed enough (or willing) to go into minute technical details about the concepts I'm going to describe in this blag post. I'm just surprised by how much I remember from my highschool and college science courses. Seriously. Energy Energy is not a thing. Now please forgive me as I repeat and highlight this important, often ignored science fact: ENERGY IS NOT A THING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111!1 Energy is the ability to do work. What is work? Work can be almost anything, from moving something to somewhere else, to heating up a lump of stuff and making it vibrate. Work is the application of force upon something, sometimes even the application of force on or against another force. There are many types of forces, and in writing terms it is these forces that should dictate what sort of energy you are describing. Several examples include: gravitational, electromagnetic (light), kinetic (movement), electric (electrons moving), radiological (radiation), thermal (heat), and chemical (two or more types of stuff reacting together to either heat up or cause movement). So please, do not give in to the temptation to use phrases like "pure energy" because that does not exist outside of bad science fiction. Energy has to be either a force, or carried in collections of stuff. Organic There are two major uses of the word "organic" and only one of them is scienctifically correct, the other was borrowed from science because of marketing forces, and that fills me with enough rage to punch a bag of apples at a farmer's market. To science, something is organic if it contains carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. Bolding has been placed upon the word "and" because all three must be present for something to be called organic. If one or more is missing, it is not considered to be organic, and should not be called organic. The word organic has little to do with the presence of life. As said above, it's a term used to describe the composition of something. Granted, the presence of organic compounds is rather suggestive that something might be, or was once alive, because to date all known living things contain carbon, oxygen and hydrogen together. If you find yourself about to use the word organic to describe something as alive (or at least reanimated), try to tamp it down and instead use the word "biological." Biological is used to actually describe something as alive, or as having its origins somehow involving life. Plasma In bad science fiction, plasma is a catch-all term for energy weapons. If it fires glowing crap that no one wants to be bothered explaining, they call it plasma and expect you to stop thinking and just en-joy the light show. The thing is: plasma is a real word, and thus has a real meaning. Plasma is the fourth state of matter (solid, liquid, gas, and plasma), and exists only when matter (stuff) is put into a highly excited or energized state. As such, plasma can be made of anything on the periodic table of elements. Without going into too much detail, regardless of what its made of almost all plasma has some universal properties. First of all, it radiates. That is, it is constantly trying to throw off enough energy stop being plasma by emitting light. Secondly, plasma vibrates along a specific oscillation. That is (again), it shakes and it also shakes in a specific rythm depending on what its made of (gold plasma will oscilate differently than silver plasma), and its energy level (plasma that was created using 500 joules will oscilate differently than plasma created using 750 joules). Third, plasma is magnetic. It's true, almost all plasma can be effected by magnets, it can be bent, compressed, stirred around, or even dissipated by them. And finally, almost all plasmas are highly reactive. There is a reason that the plasma globes you can buy contain non-reactive gasses to be energized. If there was oxygen in them, chances are they it'd break the glass by oxidizing it, and then explode in your face when the oxygen plasma meets the hydrogen and nitrogen in the open air. So if plasma is so fiddly and dangerous why bother using it? Because is radiative qualities also mean it's likely to be highly conductive. Electrons and kinetic energy can quickly move through it, transfering tremendous amounts of force from one spot to somewhere else, using the plasma as a medium of transfer. Secondly, magnetic fields are easy to generate and moderately easy to manipulate, and because of that plasma can be manipulated as well. Both of those qualities makes plasma a fantastically versatile thing to potentially use in military and industrial applications. Imagine, if you will, a lump of metal about the size of a pea phased into the plasma state and then accelerated using magnets. Faster and faster, it speeds up until it's finally released at a target. Theorhetically speaking, it is possible for that pea-sized lump of metal to hit the target with the force of a very small nuclear device. I want you to think about that. I'll do a spellcheck later. Category:Blog posts